Desperate Housewives ~ Lovely

I'm lovely,

All I am is lovely.

Lovely is the one thing I can do.

Winsome,

What I am is winsome,

Radiant as in some

Dream come true.

Oh, Isn't it a shame?

I can neither sew

Nor cook nor read or write my name.

But I'm happy

Merely being lovely,

For it's one thing I can give to you.

I see what you guys did there. This week’s episode is titled “Lovely”, which of course is the above quoted song from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to The Forum, sung by Philia, a Courtesan with nothing to her name except her looks. While it’s true that Philia turns out to be fairly useless except for her beauty, this episode proves that there’s more to Robin (Julie Benz) than her ex-stripper exterior suggests. An honor usually reserved only for dead housewives, or particularly awesome handymen, Robin gets an entire episode devoted to her and interactions with the ladies of Wysteria Lane. We now know more about her than I think we ever did about the Applewhites, for example, and more than I even want to know about the Bolens (have I mentioned how over that mystery I am?). Perhaps we’re a little biased by Julie Benz love combined with our excitement over her storyline with Katherine, but we thought this a nice little episode. It may not have advanced on going plots by much, but it did kick start an exciting new beginning for Katherine and show that Julie Benz would make a delightful long term addition to the Desperate Housewives family.

We started off the episode with Katherine’s welcome back from being crazy party, where Susan brought Robin. The men are all instantly enthralled by her, and the ladies are instantly jealous. Both cases are made worse when Robin reveals to the men that she used to be a stripper. Everyone, except for Katherine (who doesn’t have a husband or teenage boy to keep tabs on), thinks this will only end badly, despite Susan’s reassurances. To be fair, when has anything Susan’s done worked out particularly well?

Lynette and the Stripper

When Lynette discovers Parker and a bunch of his hormonal young friends spying on a showering Robin, she immediately confronts Robin to tell her to close the curtains when she takes a shower, and that the neighborhood is full of decent people and innocent children, so she better watch out. Robin lets her know that she’s sorry about the shower, but she should know that Parker asked her to have sex with him, and when she declined he then offered to pay her for it. Seriously, Parker?

“We'd hoped that it'd be another year before we had the parent-son conversation where we tell you not to offer your neighbor money for sex, but...” ~ Lynette

Tom sets Parker straight and tells him that he doesn’t need to pay for it, and in a few years he’ll be doing just fine for himself, sex-wise (ew). As soon as Parker clears out Tom lets it slip that he thinks men are always paying for sex in one way or another (dinner, flowers, presents, etc.). Lynette is disgusted (fair enough). It turns out that Tom was under the impression that the first time they made love it was because he had taken her to a fancy restaurant. Lynette tells him he’s an idiot, because the reason he got lucky was because he had shown up to the date with a light bulb to replace one burnt out in her apartment hallway, because she didn’t live in the best neighborhood. She was ready to do him right there, because he was concerned for her safety.

The next day Lynette apologizes to Robin, who accepts the apology but tells her she should close her curtains the next time she “gives it” to Tom.


Bree and the Stripper

Robin asks for Bree’s help making a cake as a thank you to Susan and Mike for their hospitality. As she doesn’t know anything about cakes except that if you are hiding in one for more than an hour it needs to have really big air holes, Bree walks her through it. Robin is super excited and takes a picture of Bree for her new cell phone screen saver. This brought my favorite throw away moment of the night, when she said her current screen saver was of a cat eating noodles, which I can only hope to be spaghetti cat.

As if we needed another reason to love Robin. After Bree revealed that she’s been having some intimacy issues with Orson, Robin suggest that she try connecting with Orson by spicing things up a bit. When Bree gets home she finds Orson reading and listening to classical music. She then begins what is easily the most awkward lap dance in the history of the human race. There is a very long list of things Bree excels at, but erotic dancing is absolutely not among them. Her dance/walk is so bizarre it prompts Orson to ask if she’s walking so strangely to make him feel better about being paralyzed. He worries that she might be having a stroke. When she tries to strip off her shirt, it gets stuck on her earing and she stumbles about with her head covered. Orson runs over her toes with his wheel chair while trying to help. It was all so crammed full of second hand embarrassment and awkwardness that I still can’t decide if it was hilarious or tragic (the jury is leaning towards hilarious). After all that is said and done, she and Orson have a sincere conversation where they speak to each other about their issues and Bree says she wants to get their intimacy back, even if it’s just as much as holding his hand while he falls asleep. She sits in his lap and he holds her while they listen to classical musical. It’s so sweet that I almost forget that they are completely glossing over Karl, Orson's blackmailing, and his kleptomania. Still, it was nice to have Orson not be complaining about something, like he’s actually working to move forward in his life. Maybe these crazy kids can work it out after all.


Gabrielle and the Stripper

Gabrielle decides that she’s had enough of Anna hanging around Danny Bolen, especially since she and Carlos overheard Angie and Nick (or Dad Bolen as we like to call him) arguing about their secret life. Gabby pulls some strings and gets Anna accepted to modeling school, which apparently starts immediately. How convenient! Seriously though, this is pretty sweet for Anna because she does want to go to New York to be a model. The only hitch is that Anna and Danny had planned to move to New York together after graduation and she doesn’t want to go without him.

Gabby tells Susan about her troubles, and Robin helpfully chirps in with a story about how when she was in high school she wanted to be a ballerina, and she was quite good. She was offered a once in a lifetime opportunity but she turned it down for a boy, who dumped her a little while later. Then she was in a car accident which injured her knee and ended her chances of a career in ballet. Gabby says that’s great! She wants her to tell Anna that story so that Anna won’t ruin her life because of a boy and end up an ex-stripper like Robin. Gee thanks. Robin does tell Anna the story, and is apparently quite convincing because Anna decides to go to New York and breaks up with Danny. Yay, we’re finally rid of Anna (I hope, but doubt)! When Robin finds out that Gabby was only using her to break up Anna and Danny, she is pissed off. She tells Gabby that she felt used, but Gabby didn’t care. In return, Robin told Danny what went down and he disappeared off to New York after her. So Robin managed to get rid of two of my least favorite characters of the season. Not too shabby! I know they’ll be back, but let me dream!

Susan and the Stripper

Despite claiming that the neighborhood has nothing to worry about when it comes to Robin, and that she is totally cool with her being in her house with her husband, she eventually goes all Susan on us and flips out. It turns out that Robin has some awesome chiropractic skills, which is handy since Mike has been suffering from major back pains. She helps him out a few times, but eventually Susan goes a little psycho from seeing too much physical contact. Convinced that she can help Mike just as well and Robin, she tries cracking his back herself and puts him in the hospital. Of course. When Robin brings MJ to the hospital Susan tells Robin that she just wasn’t comfortable with her husband being touched by a stripper in that way. Robin has had it with people calling her a stripper! She says maybe it would be best if she moved out, in order to preserve her friendship with Susan.

Katherine and the Stripper

“No one judges the woman from the loony bin when there's a stripper next door.”

Katherine is lonely in her big empty house, and coincidentally Robin is now looking for a new place to stay so her friendship with Susan isn’t destroyed. Katherine agrees to rent her a room. While getting settled in, Robin asks Katherine what it was like in the loony bin. She’s just wondering because she had always fantasized about sending her mother there. To be fair, her mother was an abusive alcoholic who took out all of her rage at Robin’s father out on her. More Robin back story not possible! Katherine takes a break from the usual “it wasn’t so bad” spiel and says that the worst part wasn’t the screaming, it was the patients with cold dead stares. It’s an odd subject to bond over, but they crack a few jokes and head out for a drink together.

During their girls night out a man comes up to them and asks them to join him and his friend for a drink. Robin politely turns them down and says they are having a girls night, but she changes her mind (a little reluctantly) when unlucky in love Katherine expresses an interest in them. Of course, as expected, the men fawn over Robin and ignore Katherine. Robin tries her best to deflect attention back over to Katherine, who is apparently thinking about starting her own catering company, but the men keep coming back to Robin and want to know what she does. A frustrated Katherine tells them that Robin is a stripper. Robin corrects her by saying she is an ex-stripper, and she is ready to leave. The men try to convince her to stay, and she tries again to throw Katherine a bone, but the men flatly reject her. So if they aren’t interested in a strong, smart, beautiful woman like Katherine, Robin informs them she’ll have to keep Katherine for herself. And she kisses Katherine. The men are shocked (and horny), and Katherine is surprised, but definitely enjoyed it.

Back at home, Katherine says she is ready to give up on men, which Robin is all for. Robin reveals to Katherine that she used to date men, but it never quite clicked. Then, while she was working at the strip club she realized that she was really attracted to women. Katherine tells her that she doesn’t think she’s been barking up the wrong tree, she’s just sick of barking. Katherine assures Robin that she doesn’t have a problem with Robin being gay and living with her, although she looks a little uncomfortable on the fade out.

Robin

We round out the episode with Robin taking a jog through the neighborhood. She runs into McCluskey, who reveals to Robin that she was once an underwear model for Sears Roebuck. Don’t worry, McCluskey’s boobs are 100% real. I know you were concerned. She asks Robin how she is settling in and Robin says that it’s nice to be in a place where people actually see her. They don’t look at her and see stripper anymore, they see Robin the person. She jogs through the neighborhood and we get a voice over confirming that the people of Wysteria Lane are looking past her beautiful exterior. However, there is at least one person (KATHERINE) who is definitely still appreciating Robin’s beauty.